The Serpent of Venice

by Christopher Moore

“I was going to suggest that,” I called after her. “She’s lovely,” I whispered to the Moor.

  I opened the door.

  “I told you,” said the puppet Jones.

  “Jeff! Get off him. Bad monkey! Bad monkey!”

  “Jeff were havin’ a laugh wif the vicar,” said Drool.

  And soon after, in the witness of a noble fool, a nitwit, a monkey, and a puppet on a stick, were Othello and the fair Desdemona made man and wife.

  CHORUS: Two days did pass while the Moor and Desdemona enjoyed their wedded delights before word of their wedding spread from priest to soldier, to servant, to the ear of Rodrigo, and he, with heavy heart from having lost Desdemona, sought comfort in his friend Iago.

  “Then the Moor has ruined Brabantio’s daughter?” said Iago, pacing about the officers’ quarters with the heady vim of inspiration. “Ha! The council will surely have him hanged, now. These are glad tidings indeed! You have witnesses, of course? If not, we shall have to shape some from the most upstanding scoundrels we can afford. You have money?”

  “No, that won’t help,” whined Rodrigo. “He has not taken the lady against her will, he has married her. Yes, she is ruined, but by her own will and consent, ruined only for me; in the eyes of God and the state, she belongs to the Moor.”

  “Oh balls.” Iago ceased his pacing. “Married?”

  “By a priest.”

  “The Moor and Desdemona married?”

  “In front of witnesses. Signed into the city’s record.”

  “Married? In front of witnesses?”

  “Witnessed by a fool, a giant, and a monkey.”

  “Balls!”

  “You said that already.”

  Iago now resumed his pacing, drew his dagger, and began drawing his plans in the air with the knife while Rodrigo flattened himself against the wall.

  “It is not too late to make this marriage the Moor’s undoing. When did this wedding take place?”

  “But two days ago. Even now Desdemona hides in the Moor’s house.”

  “And the Montressor does not know of it?”

  “No, he is in his apartments near the doge’s palace.”

  “Not at Belmont?”

  “It was at Belmont I heard the news, from Portia’s maid, Nerissa.”

  “The maid knows, but the master does not? I tell you, Rodrigo, women are a devious lot. Bed them if you must, but take their oaths but as cobwebs spun across a stable door, breaking with scant resistance to the next stallion to pass by.”

  “But, good Iago, do you not have a wife yourself ? The fair Emilia?”

  “Thus I know of what I speak. A bundle of deceit in a pleasant package is she, are they all. Woe to the man who thinks different and enables them with trust.” Iago thrust his dagger in its sheath as if dirking Caesar. “Come, Rodrigo, we will rouse Senator Brabantio and see if we can loose deadly anger on the Moor before the full tale is told. Have men with weapons ready. Brabantio is old and will have his killing done by others.”

  Roused from my gentle slumber on the foyer floor of Othello’s house, where I had landed after taking a tumble down the stairs, to settle in what appeared to be a puddle of my own sick, I went to the door to address whatever gang of reprobates was shouting and pounding and generally adding a rather grating edge to my newborn hangover.

  “What?” I opened the door, expecting sunlight to drive spikes of regret into my forehead, but instead, in the night, stood Brabantio, and behind him perhaps two dozen men with torches, a few carrying swords.

  “Montressor?” said I.

  “Fortunato?” said the Montressor. “What are you doing here?”

  “Confronting a bloody mob, evidently. What are you doing here?”

  “We’ve come to seize the Moor, who has taken my daughter Desdemona and holds her under his heathen enchantment!”

  A shout came from the rear of the crowd. “Even now the black ram is tupping his white ewe!”

  “The Moor and Desdemona even now make the beast with two backs!” came another shout.

  “Even now he doth do bold and saucy wrongs upon her!” shouted another.

  “There’s no spell,” said I. “The Moor and your daughter are married. And your mob has no pitchforks. I’ve seen a crashing fuck-bushel of blokes dragged into the street by mobs, and you need pitchforks.”

  “But we have no horses,” said a less enthusiastic voice.

  “Nor cows, neither,” said another.

  “No need to shovel hay nor manure,” whined a third.

  “I could fetch a boat hook,” suggested yet another knave.

  “Send out the Moor!” demanded Brabantio.

  “Montressor, your mob is shit,” said I. “Come back when you’ve proper pitchforks and some coherent slogans. ‘Beast with two backs’? What did you do, just go from house to house asking for illiterate nitwits to come help drag the high commander of the most powerful military force in the land from his house without so much as a sharp stick? Shoddy fucking planning, Montressor.” I slammed the door in his face and threw the bolt.

  “What was that?” asked Othello, coming down the stairs in his dressing gown, his sword and scabbard in hand.

  “Mob of knobs,” said I. I held a finger up to hold a place in the exchange while I turned and chundered into the kindling bucket by the fireplace. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and said, “Here to hang you, methinks. Oh, and Brabantio is leading them.”

  “Father?” said Desdemona, coming down the stairs behind Othello.

  The pounding on the door and the shouting resumed, although it was mostly just “Hang him!” and “Black devil!” No one appeared to be crafting more hangnail metaphors after my scolding.

  “I’ll not have this.” The Moor cinched his robe, then made for the door.

  “Only let a few through the doorway at once,” said I. “Keep their attack narrow. I’ll dispatch any who get around the swath of your sword with my daggers.” I drew one from the small of my back and flipped it so I held it by the blade. “Fate willing, we’ll be knee-deep in corpses in two ticks, and you can call for sailors to mop up the blood and carry away the baskets of severed limbs.”

  Othello paused by the heavy door. I held my dagger ready to throw and drew a second knife from the small of my back with my off hand. Desdemona stood on the stairs, her hands clasped over her mouth as if capturing a scream.

  “Perhaps I should address them from the balcony,” said Othello.

  “Excellent,” said I. “Get the tactical advantage, innit? Desdemona, put some oil on the fire to boil, love. We’ll scald the scurvy vermin before raining death and heavy furniture down upon them.”

  I turned and made to run past Desdemona up the stairs, then swooned with nausea, dropped my daggers, and caught myself on the banister. “Fuckstockings, I’m useless—”

  “Or perhaps we could find out their grievances and in the understanding, calm them,” said Desdemona, catching me by the shoulders and steadying me against another tumble down the stairs.

  “Perhaps,” said Othello.

  He was past me on the stairs and out on the balcony before I could retrieve my knives.

  “Put up your shiny swords, the dew will rust them,” said Othello. “Good Senator, you shall command more respect with years than with your weapons.”

  “Oh thou foul thief,” said Brabantio. “Where hast thou stowed my daughter?”

  “Your daughter is safe.”

  “Damned thou art,” said Brabantio. “No girl so tender and fair, yet so opposed to marriage that she turned away the most wealthy darlings of our nation, would find her way to your sooty bosom without you did bind her with spells. You, with your enchantments, hold her against her will.”

  “That I do not,” said the Moor, rather more calmly than I thought appropriate.

  “Back, you pack of dogs!” I called, pushing my way onto the balcony. “Before the Moor has all your heads bobbing on pikes.” I reached down my back collar for the puppet Jones, who is a vivid exa
mple of the fate of the piked head, except miniature and more handsome than most, but Desdemona had asked me to put the puppet up during dinner, as she found his unbroken stare and resemblance to my own striking countenance “right creepy.” Fine. “He’ll have your guts for garters, will the Moor!”

  “No he won’t,” said Desdemona from behind.

  “No I won’t,” said Othello.

  “He’ll rain down death on you and all your families, ravage your women, and fit your children on spikes with frightful efficiency!”

  “Set down your arms,” said the Moor. “Were it my cue to fight I should have known it without a prompter.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake—”

  The Moor pushed me back from the railing. “I will come down. Let us go before the doge and the council, and I shall there answer your charge under the law.”

  “Useless bloody sooty-bosomed toss-tick, that’s what you are,” said I. Othello had invoked the law, and Venice was a city of bloody laws, wasn’t it?

  “To prison with you, then,” said Brabantio. “Until a fit time for a trial.”

  Then there came from below the cry of a new voice. “Hail, General, it is Cassio!”

  I crept to the rail. At the edge of the mob stood an armed soldier in leather and light armor, and with him a cohort of six men-at-arms. Othello’s captain, Michael Cassio, who I was yet to meet.

  “The doge calls for you,” said Cassio. “There is an urgent matter of strategy and the entire council is awake and waiting. The Genoans are moving on Corsica.”

  “Look,” said I. “Your captain’s brought help. We could slaughter these knaves and still be at the council within the hour.”

  “Stop it, Pocket,” said Desdemona. “You’re just trying to come up with new ways to off yourself to ease your grief.”

  “You mean kill myself, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Possibly . . .”

  “I am coming down,” said the Moor.

  “Fuckstockings!” Out in the piazza, beyond Cassio and his men, I saw Iago crouching in a doorway, careful not to be seen by the other soldiers. How could I know that even then he was working his dread plot upon the Moor?

  On the ship to Corsica the meaning of Cordelia’s dream came to me . . .

  “You’re the bloody Jewess!” I exclaimed, coming out of a dead sleep and struggling to sit up in my hammock, which hung in our little corner of the cargo hold. We’d been at sea for two days; I’d spent much of it belowdecks, unwell.

  “Rather undermines the disguise if you’re just going to shout that out, Pocket,” said Jessica.

  “Right, sorry,” said I. “But it’s only now occurred to me that you’re the Jewess I’m not supposed to shag.”

  “I’d have snatched your bollocks off and fed them to the fish if you tried, so probably just as well you remembered.”

  “You’re still being piratey, aren’t you?”

  “I think I’d be terribly good at it, don’t you? Maybe Lorenzo and I will go pirating.”

  “Yes, well, there’s more to pirating than salty talk and not painting the decks with your breakfast every morning. There’s throats to be cut, and some nautical bits to know, too, I’ll wager. Plus, you’re a sodding girl.” This didn’t seem to be the time to mention that Lorenzo would be somewhat impaired in his pirating by being quite dead.

  “I can dress as a boy. I’m ever so clever at it. I was talking to two soldiers on the deck while you slept, and neither even suspected me to be a girl. One is even an officer—on his way to see your friend Othello as well. Called Iago. Looks a bit piratey himself. I didn’t catch the other bloke’s name.”

  “Iago? Iago is on this ship?”

  “He said that’s his name.”

  “Did you tell him you were traveling with me? With a companion? Or that I know Othello?”

  “He didn’t seem interested. He was rather distracted in lecturing his friend about money and how deceitful women are, which, overhearing, is how I found my way into their conversation. I was obliged to agree with him, given the circumstances. Excused myself when the two decided to have a communal wee over the side, so as not to reveal my manly shortcomings.”

  “But you told him nothing of yourself or me.”

  “It wasn’t called for.”

  “Hand me your rucksack.”

  “You don’t need any more gold. There’s nowhere to spend it out here.”

  “I need to refashion my disguise,” said I. “If Iago recognizes me, we are finished.”

  FOURTEEN

  A World of Sighs

  In Belmont did fair Nerissa curse the English fool when she rose to find her Portia quite unslain, her delicate throat quite unslit, and her musical voice still quite capable of barking commands to her servants, while intermittently whining about the sad path laid before her by her dead and arse-eaten father.

  “Fucking fool,” said Nerissa, under her breath, hiding a sour scowl behind her hand, as if a bite of lemon tart had bubbled up from below.

  “Oh, Nerissa, I am beside myself with worry,” said Portia. “Because he did not present his suit in time, Bassanio does not try for my hand with the caskets until tomorrow afternoon. Before him, in the morning, the Duke of Aragon tries, and today the Prince of Morocco, and he with as much the gift of chance as any. I dread him.”

  “Aye, mistress, but I hear the prince is fair-minded and generous.”

  “What does it matter if he has the condition of a saint, when he hath the complexion of a devil? Would you have me surrender my charms to his most dusky affections, even as my sister beslutted herself with Othello?”

  “Rest easy, lady, no matter his choice, the prince shall be bound by bad luck, I’m sure.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely,” said Nerissa as she braided Portia’s hair, preparing to fit it into a tiara for her appearance before the prince. While she worked, she mused, “Of course, if the fool had done the slaughter, I no doubt would be the one washing the body and scrubbing the blood out of the bedding, as the staff is composed of nothing but cowards and catch-farts, so perhaps the fool has done me service by leaving breath in your scrawny bellows.”

  Nerissa knew that as long as Portia fretted over her own fate, which was most of the time, she heard only the tones of her maid’s voice and not the words, so Nerissa liked to take these opportunities to croon her resentment in a manner most melodious.

  Portia said, “Perhaps we should fix my hair askew, muss my gown, taint my breath with garlic so the prince will find me unpleasant and go away without taking his chance at the caskets.”

  “Dear Portia, don’t be silly, to thine own self be true; the prince will see through to your unpleasantness without the taint on your breath.”

  Before Portia could formulate a retort, a fanfare played from the dock and the two women looked at each other, eyebrows raised in surprise.

  “He travels with his own trumpeter?” said Nerissa. “Perhaps you should reconsider, lady.”

  Portia led the way down the grand staircase to the foyer, where they were met by two of Brabantio’s lawyers—bent-backed graybeards in black robes and mortarboard hats—escorting the Prince of Morocco and an entourage of six soldiers, all wrapped in white robes from head to toe, their faces as black as polished ebony, each wearing a scimitar in his sash, the prince’s in a jeweled scabbard. The prince bowed, then held his bow so Portia might glide down the staircase as if presenting herself upon the stage before him, where she returned his bow. Nerissa, having played this scene out many times before, came bouncing down behind her mistress with such enthusiasm that her bosoms nearly escaped the top of her gown. The Moors were captivated.

  The prince tore his gaze from Nerissa’s décolletage and addressed Portia. “Lady, you are more beautiful than the stories that precede you. It is no wonder that the seas fill with ships bringing suitors from all the corners of the world.”

  “Thank you, kind sir,” said Portia. She betrayed a sneer, whi
ch did not pass the prince unnoticed.

  “Mislike me not for my complexion,” said the Moor. “I am but the shadowed design of the burnished sun where I was bred. I would not change my hue except to steal your favor, my gentle queen.”

  “You stand as fair as any suitor I have looked on, but choice is not solely led by my eye. My father has set the lottery of my destiny.”

  One of the lawyers, longer and whiter of beard than the other, stepped forward. “He knows of the terms and has paid the price of his chance.” The lawyer then made his way to the doors to the terrace, which he unlocked with a key on a chain about his neck.

  “Condolences on the loss of your father,” said the prince. “I heard only of his passing after we arrived in Venice or I would not have added the weight of my suit to the lady’s grief.”

  Meaning, thought Nerissa, that his interest in Portia was the political alliance with her father on the council, not her legendary beauty and widely exaggerated cleverness.

  Portia, too, caught the subtext of the prince’s comment, quickstepped to the terrace doors, and drew aside the curtain.

  “You must take your chance,” she said. “Or not choose at all, but swear before you choose that should you choose wrongly, you must tell no one which casket you chose, and never speak to this lady afterward in the way of marriage.”

  “If so cursed, I will console myself with my other nineteen wives,” said the prince.

  Nerissa covered her mouth to stop from giggling, but alas, snorted a bit and drew the dragon’s glare from Portia.

  The prince made his way around the table, reading the placard on each of the caskets.

  At the lead casket, he read: “ ‘Who chooseth me must live and hazard all he has.’ Why, this is more a threat than a promise.”

  He then moved to the silver casket. “ ‘Who chooseth me shall get as much as he deserves.’ But what a man deserves is not always that which he requires.”

  The prince stepped to the gold casket. “ ‘Who chooseth me shall gain what many men desire.’ Methinks that only a bed of gold would be worthy of fair Portia. I would have the key to this one.”